6/30/2010

I posted yesterday on Elena Kagan’s role in releasing an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (ACOG) memo on partial birth abortion. Senator Orrin Hatch asked Kagan about the memo today, and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air calls Kagan’s response her Urkel defense:

“If the intent of Elena Kagan’s testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee is to build confidence in her competence, her answer to Orrin Hatch about a controversial memo has to be a huge step in the wrong direction. Despite the issue having been in the news for the last 24 hours and the centrality of it to the Clinton-era efforts to stop a ban on partial-birth abortion, Kagan initially claimed ignorance of the issue. Only when pressed did Kagan recall her intentions, as Byron York and LifeNews‘ Steven Ertelt both report this afternoon:

This all smells like people trying to act more clever than they are. I’m sure that Kagan was instructed to answer the question that way.

I think that someone should ask her to define, specifically, what things that the Federal Government should not do.

But good luck with that. Though I think someone standing up and speaking their minds honestly would get public support—even if there were areas of disagreement. This mealymouthed stuff just contributes to our increasing distrust of government.

This mealy mouth crap is a direct result of what happened to Bork. And, of course, Kagan was delighted by that.

I don’t know what’s worse. The hatred Thomas and Estrada get for obvious reasons, or the hatred Bork gets for being honest. Either way, we’re getting the Supreme Court justice we deserve in Kagan. A Supreme Court justice with no judicial experience and a refusal to explain her background work is simply exactly what the country ordered when it elected a President Obama with no executive experience.

How’s this for personal responsibility – I penned it by hand and then signed it, but I will not ever admit that I wrote it. Who does she do dictatation for and will that person follow her to her new berth?

She said that she would not have been able to influence ACOG. Oh, is that why she sent the letter? I love the way she answers the wrong question. The question is not whether it can be proven that she was able to influence them. The question is whether she tried.

Kagan’s comportment was in keeping with past nominees, whether liberal or conservative, who stuck to truisms about the impartial judiciary no matter how hard senators tried to smoke them out on how they would lean on matters before the court.

But she demanded a higher standard in a 1995 book review when she wrote, “When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public.”

She says now, “It just feels a lot different from here than it felt from back there.” By back there, she meant where she once sat as a Judiciary Committee staffer witnessing the confirmation hearing for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg.